SMART TALK.

Parenting

What Is She Saying? Here's How To Find Out

June 16, 1996|By Elaine Glusac.

How can you turn your tot into a talkative and intelligent tyke?

Two California developmental psychologists believe they have found a way to give babies a head start in expression, through using a hand signal "language" that lets them communicate before they can speak.

Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn, co-authors of "Baby Signs" (Contemporary Books, $12.95), have found that babies who used sign communication surpassed non-signers in cognitive and vocabulary development. By age 3, the babies were between three and five months ahead, even though signs were gradually abandoned to verbal language at age 2.

"Baby signs provide a window into babies' minds, what they're thinking, what they notice in the world," says Goodwyn, an associate professor of psychology at California State University at Stanislaus.

Any signal can represent a word as long as it is used consistently and the word is spoken with the sign. For example, the book suggests putting thumb to lips and tilting your head back for "drink" or "bottle."

Acredolo, a psychology professor at the University of California at Davis, and Goodwyn got the idea to investigate babies' symbolic communication when they noticed Acredolo's then-infant daughter, Kate, making a sniffing gesture whenever she saw a flower.

Further research found that babies create about four signs on their own. Teaching them signs, the researchers say, expands their vocabulary and allows parents to understand the child.

Infants can express desires and observations with signs. One mother the researchers interviewed first assumed that her crying child was ready to leave a pool area. But when he signed "hot," she understood his feet were hot on the concrete.

The two-way exchange between parent and baby can ease frustration.

"The child gets a sense of accomplishment," Goodwyn says, "and parents say it increases self-esteem because the baby is getting positive reinforcement."